Bur oak nearly always goes to market as white oak, or simply as oak, and
it is difficult to ascertain all the uses found for it. Some factories
which make furniture, finish, vehicles, and other articles that figure
in the country’s trade, attempt to identify the woods they use. That is
done as carefully in Michigan as anywhere else, though comparatively few
of the factories carry out the plan even in that state where many of the
best wood-using establishments of the country are located. In a report
issued in 1912 which gave statistics collected from more than eight
hundred Michigan factories, bur oak received separate consideration. The
uses there are doubtless representative, and will hold throughout the
country wherever bur oak is fairly abundant. It is listed as baseboards,
billiard table rims, bookcases, clay working machines, filing cabinets,
furniture, hand sleds, hay balers, interior finish, molding, tinplate
boxes, wagon sills, work benches. The amount of wood used in the state
was nearly 900,000 feet, according to the reports; but it certainly does
not include all. What it does show, however, is that bur oak is one of
the substantial woods of that region, and that it possesses properties
which fit it for many important places in the country’s industries.
Bur oak contributes to the output of cooper shops. Slack coopers class
it with many other hardwoods for the manufacture of barrels for
vegetables and various other commodities, while the makers of barrels
for liquids put bur oak in with white oak.
The future of bur oak does not promise much after the trees which now
remain have been cut. That does not mean that the species will become
extinct, for that is improbable; but when the mature trees which
developed during two or three hundred years of forest conditions have
passed away, there is not much prospect of others being left to grow to
the age and size which will make them valuable as lumber. Woodlot
owners will not wait much longer than the seventy-five or one hundred
years required to grow trees of crosstie size. Railroads pay good prices
for this wood, for it lasts well, holds spikes in a satisfactory manner,
and is strong and hard. As far as can be seen, bur oak will fare in the
future about like white oak; that is, few trees will be left standing
long enough to attain large size, because it will pay better to cut them
while comparatively small.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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